Books in Brief: FICTION

Balkanization

By KEN KALFUS

Published: August 25, 1996

David Albahari writes in the rich Balkan tradition of urbanity and multiculturism that stands in opposition to the region's strident, often mournful nation-building literatures. Set in his native Serbia, the short stories in WORDS ARE SOMETHING ELSE (Northwestern University, cloth, $49.95; paper, $15.95) are less about the particularities of place than about the universal riddles of language, especially the failure of words to bridge the spaces between people. Opening one tale, he warns the reader: ''What I'll describe is unknown to you; you will never learn what it is I meant to say.'' This is a daunting threat, but an exaggerated one. Sensitively translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, most of Mr. Albahari's stories are quite accessible, as well as playful and good-natured, recalling the metafictions of Robert Coover and Mr. Albahari's countryman Danilo Kis. In the early stories of this retrospective collection, Mr. Albahari writes about a stiflingly close Jewish household in the Belgrade suburb of Zemun; as the members of the family struggle to love one another, their conflicts are sometimes comic and often absurd. In his later stories, Mr. Albahari peers into the chasms that gape between a husband and wife -- and, even more dizzyingly, between a writer and his reader. Ken Kalfus